Thank you to all the wonderfully engaging women who attended today's workshop, "Fear: Use It or Be Used by It."
Please use the comment fields to leave feedback; three sentences about what you learned and anything else you want to communicate to me and/or other attendees.
This feedback will help inform and evolve this work and is much appreciated.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sleepers Awake!
I was having tea with Gloria Burgess (of Jazz Inc. and Lift Every Voice Foundation) last week and we were talking about leadership and how out of alignment American culture is with American ideals and emerging values of sustainability. We agreed that the pursuit of "The American Dream" (more info on just what this is/means, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream) has hurt more than helped most Americans, while crippling our planet.
Gloria laughed heartily when I quipped: In order to have the American Dream, you have to be asleep.
See, what is most dangerous - for you, me, us, and them - is that the American Dream is set in a troubled sleep of scarcity and insatiable consumption. In order to chase this dream, you have to believe that you don't have what you need, that what you need to be happy is your own material riches, that the stuff you have is never enough, that you will always need more/different stuff, and that there is not enough stuff to make everyone happy. This mindset has set the pace and tone for the American lives we are living today - which most of us feel are not all that happy - and has directly contributed to the below-prime mortgage fiasco that triggered the economic collapse in 2008.
The area of happiness research offers some insight into what really brings happiness (Happiness Studies). We are happier when we spend time with family and friends, when we help people, and when we share resources equitably. Other research shows that we are softwired for connection, empathy, and belonging (see Emphathic Civilisation), not competition, aggression, and violence. How does this fit with consumer society and "keeping up with the Joneses"?
Awaken dreamers! We have all we need and more!!
Practice abundance thinking and enjoy the creativity it activates and nourishes. Walk outside and meet your tribe, start creating your family of choice. We are poised to make a monumental choice to care and connect with all that frightens us, to hug the frightening monster of our nightmares and know that it is bringing us important information about living consciously and compassionately and happily on this planet today and for many tomorrows.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Flights of Fear
I love tastings! Call me yuppie, or uppity, or shee-shee, or whatever - I love enjoying little bits drink and food arranged and paired in such a way as to emphasize the experience of taste and texture rather than the mere satisfaction of animal hunger. I'd rather have a wine and cheese pairing that brings me ecstatic awareness of sensational joy in my capacity of scent, taste, and felt than a huge meal prepared to satiate my physical hunger and induce a food coma. I'd rather have a beer flight than a pint of my favorite stout.
Recently I introduced a group of jobseekers to the concept of "flavors of fear." They ate it up! It wasn't quite 31 flavors, but it was about 18 more than most of them were aware existed. Not that they hadn't experienced them - not at all. Everyone recognized the feelings of awe, concern, horror, reverence, and dread - they just weren't aware that all of these were aspects of fear. We did some exercises around bringing up these different feelings/emotions and "tasting" the fear in them. We appreciated that more often than not these were blends that may even include other feelings/emotions which we have been taught to believe are separate from fear - love, care, anger, arousal. Like fine wines, to consciously experience emotions and their associated biochemical cascades is to notice notes and aromas we don't expect - like leather, tobacco, and apricot from rotten grapes and old wood.
I love turning people on to fear! Fear alerts us to what is important and arouses us to interact with a challenge. Our greatest fears as individuals are our greatest challenges as a species - fear of the unknown, fear of the "other," fear of abandonment, fear of annihilation. Our challenge is to slow down and practice interrupting our reactions to fear so that we may taste what is moving through us. When we can become aware of the flavors of fear we can make choices to respond rather than just react (and there are way more than just fight or flight responses!); we can appreciate what this fear has to tell us rather than just stuff ourselves until we fall asleep.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Do Be Do Be Do
I'm sure I'm not the only one who's seen this bit of "folk wisdom" (i.e., graffiti on the bathroom stall): To do is to be - Socrates; To be is to do - Satre; Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
That last one seems to be the most poignant for me at this point in my life. I vacillate constantly between identifying with what I do (especially to make money) and trying to express who I am regardless of what I do. I've labeled the former as a masculine characteristic, but I know many, many women who do this, too, and it really is a Western characteristic (which, admittedly, is quite masculine).
My recent (the last three years) experience of being unemployed for at least three months annually (and, no, I'm not in the construction business - I graduated, got a divorce, and relocated) has been very difficult on my psyche - as well as my finances. While I value quality relationship work, community building, intellectual exploration and exercise, and being a good friend and mother, I still struggle with whether or not I have a purpose (right?) here without producing anything for financial compensation. And - this cannot continue for long for very practical reasons. While my friends share food, entertainment, and companionship with me regularly without any expectation of recompense, I'm the one that has to pay my bills.
So, this is another thing - the tension between how I live and how I want to live: I live alone in an apartment and must have money coming in to maintain my ability to continue doing so; I want to live in community where wealth emerges from relationships and experience and basic needs are covered by collective resources. But who am I in the latter scenario? Am I actually striving to dissolve my identity by intending to have a life in which I can live fully and not make any money? Would this feel like suicide? I would be doing just what I am now in my unemployed state, but would the absence of the Damocles sword of bills really contribute to my being happy and me while not making money?
I like to think I'm somehow more evolved or mature or better than all those "spoiled rich kids" who live in just such a state of being - but I doubt it. I may become inured to real life, removed from the real experience of so many who continue to struggle. From my privileged "compound of community" I may lose awareness of how life happens. Or would I? My imagination is failing me when I try to envision a world beyond consumerism, capitalism, and hierarchical power. Perhaps "infecting" the world with values that have nothing to do with money or production would change things so much that what I perceive as "real" life would be radically different from what I know now of privilege and power.
However, I'm/we're not there yet. Not even close - regardless of how many wonderful people are in my sphere of influence. The levels of complex, interdependent aspects of how humans exist on this planet is beyond predictable. I keep watching for the linchpin, the leverage point that will move humans to actually evolve - or disappear. We are amazingly adaptable creatures, but for all our technologies and all our stuff, we are still acting out very old patterns. Evolution (transformation) is different than adaptation (transition) and it will take evolution to get me to imagine how I can be and do without some form of money.
That last one seems to be the most poignant for me at this point in my life. I vacillate constantly between identifying with what I do (especially to make money) and trying to express who I am regardless of what I do. I've labeled the former as a masculine characteristic, but I know many, many women who do this, too, and it really is a Western characteristic (which, admittedly, is quite masculine).
My recent (the last three years) experience of being unemployed for at least three months annually (and, no, I'm not in the construction business - I graduated, got a divorce, and relocated) has been very difficult on my psyche - as well as my finances. While I value quality relationship work, community building, intellectual exploration and exercise, and being a good friend and mother, I still struggle with whether or not I have a purpose (right?) here without producing anything for financial compensation. And - this cannot continue for long for very practical reasons. While my friends share food, entertainment, and companionship with me regularly without any expectation of recompense, I'm the one that has to pay my bills.
So, this is another thing - the tension between how I live and how I want to live: I live alone in an apartment and must have money coming in to maintain my ability to continue doing so; I want to live in community where wealth emerges from relationships and experience and basic needs are covered by collective resources. But who am I in the latter scenario? Am I actually striving to dissolve my identity by intending to have a life in which I can live fully and not make any money? Would this feel like suicide? I would be doing just what I am now in my unemployed state, but would the absence of the Damocles sword of bills really contribute to my being happy and me while not making money?
I like to think I'm somehow more evolved or mature or better than all those "spoiled rich kids" who live in just such a state of being - but I doubt it. I may become inured to real life, removed from the real experience of so many who continue to struggle. From my privileged "compound of community" I may lose awareness of how life happens. Or would I? My imagination is failing me when I try to envision a world beyond consumerism, capitalism, and hierarchical power. Perhaps "infecting" the world with values that have nothing to do with money or production would change things so much that what I perceive as "real" life would be radically different from what I know now of privilege and power.
However, I'm/we're not there yet. Not even close - regardless of how many wonderful people are in my sphere of influence. The levels of complex, interdependent aspects of how humans exist on this planet is beyond predictable. I keep watching for the linchpin, the leverage point that will move humans to actually evolve - or disappear. We are amazingly adaptable creatures, but for all our technologies and all our stuff, we are still acting out very old patterns. Evolution (transformation) is different than adaptation (transition) and it will take evolution to get me to imagine how I can be and do without some form of money.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
History Lesson
I got another lesson in un-history yesterday. That is, I learned - again - that something I'd been taught in school to believe as fact was a complete (and recent) fiction. However, that this fiction has become fact in our culture marks it as myth, or sacred story. Our attachment to the hard line between history as true and myth as false shadows the real truth - that stories have power, regardless of how many facts they contain, for the people that repeat them.
George Santayana, a Spanish essayist and philosopher, wrote, "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."(1906) This phrase has spawned many paraphrased versions, such as:
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.
Consider for a moment the source of this quote - particularly in light of the phrase, "as among savages." Who is telling this story? How does he define "progress"? What combination of rank, culture, economics, race, age, epoch, etc. informed his writing?
History is very different from "the past." History is a written account of events by those who are still around to write them, i.e., history is written by conquerors. The spin doctors who seem so transparent today create history by repeating their account again and again. The account that sticks, that lasts through centuries, is the one that best serves those in power. If you are not a member of the power elite, or their followers, your account - regardless of how factual it is - gets lost in the mob mentality of sound bites and spin. Even Shakespeare, a man of rather mythic proportions today, participated in political spin when he cast Richard the III as a monster to validate Henry IV's usurption of the throne via murder.
Many power minority groups have been accused of "revisionist" history; indeed, such a claim may well be made about the previous example. And they say it as if it's a bad thing. Well, as far as history being an account of and by the winners of power struggles, I guess it could be. Re-visioning, taking another look at, the past more often than not shows that history is fabricated for very specific, likely political, ends. It is an edifice built to show off how superior the winners are, how they couldn't help but wrest power, land, money, culture, etc. away from "savages," malcontents, and monsters. If more facts got out, if others got to repeat their accounts, it would likely be bad for those "winners."
So, if you seek to stop repeating history, re-member the past. Put back together the events, people, and times that were ripped apart to feed propaganda and power elites. And the best place to start is with re-membering, very honestly and authentically, your own past by getting around and behind the history you've written about it in your own mind and life. "As within, so with out" - as you re-vision and re-member your past, and share this process with those close to you, the more free we can all be from history.
**The new re-visionist story I learned was that no one in Europe believed the world was flat when Columbus set sail. Everyone had known for centuries the world was round. The story about Columbus defying sages who thought the world was flat was written by Washington Irving in the 19th Century. Again, consider the source...
George Santayana, a Spanish essayist and philosopher, wrote, "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."(1906) This phrase has spawned many paraphrased versions, such as:
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.
Consider for a moment the source of this quote - particularly in light of the phrase, "as among savages." Who is telling this story? How does he define "progress"? What combination of rank, culture, economics, race, age, epoch, etc. informed his writing?
History is very different from "the past." History is a written account of events by those who are still around to write them, i.e., history is written by conquerors. The spin doctors who seem so transparent today create history by repeating their account again and again. The account that sticks, that lasts through centuries, is the one that best serves those in power. If you are not a member of the power elite, or their followers, your account - regardless of how factual it is - gets lost in the mob mentality of sound bites and spin. Even Shakespeare, a man of rather mythic proportions today, participated in political spin when he cast Richard the III as a monster to validate Henry IV's usurption of the throne via murder.
Many power minority groups have been accused of "revisionist" history; indeed, such a claim may well be made about the previous example. And they say it as if it's a bad thing. Well, as far as history being an account of and by the winners of power struggles, I guess it could be. Re-visioning, taking another look at, the past more often than not shows that history is fabricated for very specific, likely political, ends. It is an edifice built to show off how superior the winners are, how they couldn't help but wrest power, land, money, culture, etc. away from "savages," malcontents, and monsters. If more facts got out, if others got to repeat their accounts, it would likely be bad for those "winners."
So, if you seek to stop repeating history, re-member the past. Put back together the events, people, and times that were ripped apart to feed propaganda and power elites. And the best place to start is with re-membering, very honestly and authentically, your own past by getting around and behind the history you've written about it in your own mind and life. "As within, so with out" - as you re-vision and re-member your past, and share this process with those close to you, the more free we can all be from history.
**The new re-visionist story I learned was that no one in Europe believed the world was flat when Columbus set sail. Everyone had known for centuries the world was round. The story about Columbus defying sages who thought the world was flat was written by Washington Irving in the 19th Century. Again, consider the source...
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Embodying Irony Sucks
OK - so I'm writing a book about fear and transformational learning. I know this stuff inside and out; in fact, I researched and wrote a dissertation on this stuff! Still, I'm sitting here staring at the page for chapter two about shadows in the classroom, and I'm almost paralyzed by fear.
Yes, the "fear expert" and "transformation specialist" is suffering from fear that she's not good enough, that she's bullshitting her way through this, and that she really doesn't have anything to say that anyone wants to hear. Stories and admonitions swirl through my consciousness that tell me I don't have enough experience, or the right kind of experience, or that what I'm writing about is useless to "real" educators.
The thing is - I know all that is wrong. I know that people get lit up just talking about this stuff with me and that icons of adult education have encouraged and praised this work as both necessary and worthy. I have taught people in classrooms, workshops, and retreats to overall positive reviews. I have been almost ordered to write this book by people I love and respect and I am, ultimately, the only one that can do it.
So - WTF?!
Well, I'll just write about not being able to write. That's the kind of weird thing writers do.
Part of this could be called laziness. Writing is hard! It doesn't appear that way to observation - indeed one person I allowed to witness how I write quipped, "It just looks like you're wandering around and staring off into space." Regardless of how many times I explain that the work is internal, that the vast majority of writing happens before anything gets on a page, people who don't call themselves writers just don't get it. And I'm tired of my own brain repeating this crap over and over - that I'm not really writing unless I'm putting words to a page (hence, this blog post to get that part of my brain to shut the hell up!).
Part of this is being isolated from others with whom I can talk about this topic in a way that will light up my thinking. While I know other folks get lit up when I talk about this in an introductory way, it has been a long time since grad school and talking with people who light me up. Being an expert (in the "I know more than those around me" way) in something is fine for the ego, but it sucks for really creative and dynamic work.
Part of it is being creatively "out of shape." It has been a very long time since I wrote in this way for this long. My writing muscles are sore and complaining about the sudden upsurge in activity. Perhaps this post is way to back off and keep going...
I still need to write this chapter and book. I can write whiny blogs, I can run errands, I can go back to bed, I can dink around on Facebook, but I still have to write this book!
Ultimately, I will write this book in whatever way it happens. This is my process. Yes, it's self-absorbed. Yes, it's weird. Yes, it's almost completely invisible to the naked eye. And, yes, I can create and deliver something of value as a result - regardless of how long it takes.
Even though I don't want to, and I'm scared, and the irony of the situation is so very painful.
Yes, the "fear expert" and "transformation specialist" is suffering from fear that she's not good enough, that she's bullshitting her way through this, and that she really doesn't have anything to say that anyone wants to hear. Stories and admonitions swirl through my consciousness that tell me I don't have enough experience, or the right kind of experience, or that what I'm writing about is useless to "real" educators.
The thing is - I know all that is wrong. I know that people get lit up just talking about this stuff with me and that icons of adult education have encouraged and praised this work as both necessary and worthy. I have taught people in classrooms, workshops, and retreats to overall positive reviews. I have been almost ordered to write this book by people I love and respect and I am, ultimately, the only one that can do it.
So - WTF?!
Well, I'll just write about not being able to write. That's the kind of weird thing writers do.
Part of this could be called laziness. Writing is hard! It doesn't appear that way to observation - indeed one person I allowed to witness how I write quipped, "It just looks like you're wandering around and staring off into space." Regardless of how many times I explain that the work is internal, that the vast majority of writing happens before anything gets on a page, people who don't call themselves writers just don't get it. And I'm tired of my own brain repeating this crap over and over - that I'm not really writing unless I'm putting words to a page (hence, this blog post to get that part of my brain to shut the hell up!).
Part of this is being isolated from others with whom I can talk about this topic in a way that will light up my thinking. While I know other folks get lit up when I talk about this in an introductory way, it has been a long time since grad school and talking with people who light me up. Being an expert (in the "I know more than those around me" way) in something is fine for the ego, but it sucks for really creative and dynamic work.
Part of it is being creatively "out of shape." It has been a very long time since I wrote in this way for this long. My writing muscles are sore and complaining about the sudden upsurge in activity. Perhaps this post is way to back off and keep going...
I still need to write this chapter and book. I can write whiny blogs, I can run errands, I can go back to bed, I can dink around on Facebook, but I still have to write this book!
Ultimately, I will write this book in whatever way it happens. This is my process. Yes, it's self-absorbed. Yes, it's weird. Yes, it's almost completely invisible to the naked eye. And, yes, I can create and deliver something of value as a result - regardless of how long it takes.
Even though I don't want to, and I'm scared, and the irony of the situation is so very painful.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Taxman Cometh
I saw "The Iceman Cometh" some years ago at the Ashland Shakesperean Festival and was very unimpressed, to the point that I really don't remember the play at all except for the overall feeling of dread every time I hear the name.
I have been dreading 2009's tax judgment for a few months, ever since I committed financial heresy and cashed out all my retirement accounts to get out of consumer debt and get my money away from the Casino on Wall St.
In this moment (an hour or so have hearing the news), there are a few things going on with this:
1) My priorities have radically changed since my mid-twenties (when I opened the first account) and I resent being penalized for growing and changing, i.e., I no longer want to put off my life until I can afford to live it and the United Banks of America do not like that kind of thinking.
2) Somehow, through the squirrelly world of tax laws, I owe more taxes on money I didn't make last year. Huh? The accountant (yes, I employed a professional to navigate these treacherous shoals) rattled off some numbers the "proved" why I "made" way more money than I ever saw, but that did nothing to bring sense to the matter.
3) I knew this was coming and have semi-prepared for it; I still resent it and am too awful of a liar to try to get away with anything.
4) The money that I now owe my government is money that I got to work with last year to float me through bouts of unemployment, divorce (that's another thing: I'm penalized for being single), and multiple relocations. It's money they didn't get to have to do stupid stuff I don't like for one year. Good.
Now I'm all amped up and anxious about how I'm going to pay this huge amount given that I just got laid off and have no immediate prospects.
But, really, that's just an old game my head is playing.
I've lived through my own worst nightmare and thrived in the hereafter. I have resources and assets the government can't touch - friends, family, intelligence, health, creativity, ingenuity, and strength forged through some serious shit. I have savings that will see me through multiple months of no employment, and this kind of situation is exactly why I've been stashing money away!
So, yes, any one of my "untouchable" resources could go away tomorrow, but my ability to keep creating more, to continue to engage with others and life will not go away. Life is in flow...and ebb, like it feels right now. Still, my experience over the last four decades assures me that life, including my own, personal life, finds a way. This is far more important and vital than any amount of government script.
I have been dreading 2009's tax judgment for a few months, ever since I committed financial heresy and cashed out all my retirement accounts to get out of consumer debt and get my money away from the Casino on Wall St.
In this moment (an hour or so have hearing the news), there are a few things going on with this:
1) My priorities have radically changed since my mid-twenties (when I opened the first account) and I resent being penalized for growing and changing, i.e., I no longer want to put off my life until I can afford to live it and the United Banks of America do not like that kind of thinking.
2) Somehow, through the squirrelly world of tax laws, I owe more taxes on money I didn't make last year. Huh? The accountant (yes, I employed a professional to navigate these treacherous shoals) rattled off some numbers the "proved" why I "made" way more money than I ever saw, but that did nothing to bring sense to the matter.
3) I knew this was coming and have semi-prepared for it; I still resent it and am too awful of a liar to try to get away with anything.
4) The money that I now owe my government is money that I got to work with last year to float me through bouts of unemployment, divorce (that's another thing: I'm penalized for being single), and multiple relocations. It's money they didn't get to have to do stupid stuff I don't like for one year. Good.
Now I'm all amped up and anxious about how I'm going to pay this huge amount given that I just got laid off and have no immediate prospects.
But, really, that's just an old game my head is playing.
I've lived through my own worst nightmare and thrived in the hereafter. I have resources and assets the government can't touch - friends, family, intelligence, health, creativity, ingenuity, and strength forged through some serious shit. I have savings that will see me through multiple months of no employment, and this kind of situation is exactly why I've been stashing money away!
So, yes, any one of my "untouchable" resources could go away tomorrow, but my ability to keep creating more, to continue to engage with others and life will not go away. Life is in flow...and ebb, like it feels right now. Still, my experience over the last four decades assures me that life, including my own, personal life, finds a way. This is far more important and vital than any amount of government script.
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